Tips and Tools to Decorate a Children's Birthday Cake

Young children just love celebrating their birthday. They can't wait for it to come by. As a parent, we want to make the day special for them too. Apart from the birthday present, the birthday cake is the next most important thing in their birthday celebration. You can always place an order for a specially decorated cake, but they can be quite costly. Furthermore, if you have such a cake one year, you may feel obligated to have such a cake every year. Afterall, you don't want make your children feel that some birthdays are more special then others.

There's another way to add "specialness" to your children's birthday cake: bake and decorate it yourself. The effort and love you put into making the birthday cake will definitely give your children that special feeling. Also, it's more cost effective. It's one way to save money.

If you are new to cake decorating, here is a list of tools you should have to start off your new skill:

• Rubber spatulas These spatulas are flexible and are best used for scraping cake and frosting bowls.
• Metal spatulas Get one large metal spatula as well as a small angled one. They will help you to spread and smooth frosting on the cake. Use the small metal spatula to carefully spread a thin layer of frosting on the cake. This helps to keep the cake from crumbling. After that you can spread on a normal layer of frosting.
• Piping bags At the stores, you will find available reusable bags that come in 8 inches, 12 inches and 18 inches. You can also use disposable plastic bags and zip-lock bags.
• Couplers The icing tips in the piping bags are held by coupling nozzles. These nozzles allow you to switch to different types of tips for various decorating effects.
• Food coloring paste, gel, or powder Unlike liquid food coloring, these kinds of colorings are more concentrated. Plus they will not thin the icing.
• Turntable You could ice a cake without a turntable but it would be much easier if you had one. Even a lazy susan will work.

The following are cake decorating tips you should know:

• Have your ingredients at room temperature because they mix better.
• Invest in a good and reliable electric beater. Beating by hand, you may not get all the lumps out.
• Cool your cakes by inverting them onto a wire rack. Give time for the cake to completely cool down before you begin to decorate. You'll have problems if the cake is still warm. Your decoration may turn out horrible.
• Trim your cake flat then turn it upside down. Your cake will then sit flat. The bottom of the cake is smoother and therefore better used as the top of the cake to decorate with icing.
• Instead of buying a cake board, you can use a large piece of stiff cardboard and cover it with colored foil.
• Determine what kind of icing will suit your decoration best. Butter Cream is a great icing for decorating birthday cakes.
• To avoid smearing the cake board, place cut up strips of waxed paper under the cake. After you have finished with your decorating, just pull them out. They will come out easily and your cake board will be nice and clean.

You'll probably make mistakes and do a less then satisfactory job the first few tries at cake decorating. Do not be disheartened. Mistakes are just stepping stones to making a nicer cake next time.

Cake decorating can be fun and easy if you know how to do it right. With the right instructions, you too can create marvelous cake decorations, just like in the shops (or better). Click to discover the best way to learn how to decorate a cake.

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Get Creative with Birthday Cake Decorations

Each year your lovely child has a birthday and yet again you have to find the best birthday cake and birthday cake decorations. Even if you have made up your mind to prepare the cake by yourself, you still have to make the most important decision – choose the proper birthday cake decorations. Of course, there are hundreds of themes available. Even though it might sound like something very difficult, don’t give up hope and give it a shot. You will see that it is not that hard to decorate a cake beautifully.

If you are not much of a cook and making a masterpiece is way out of your possibilities, then you should go with a sheet cake. There is a great variety of birthday cake decorations that you can use. If you are making a sheet cake you might use the balloon cake theme. This idea is quite easy, so take advantage of it. Once you have the baked, cooled and frosted sheet cake, all you need to do is frost eight or nine colourful cookies and place them on the dessert. If you add the string for the balloons and a tube of icing and you will have everything you need for a great party.

You can find many both amusing and creative cake decorations. Just visit the local discount store and get some volcanoes and dinosaurs, add more colouring to your already baked cake. You can create a prehistoric landscape on your birthday cake. I am sure your kids will love these birthday cake decorations as children are interested in creatures and animals.

There are many other specific party themes you can use, as well. One of the greatest is the farm cake idea. It is really suitable when you are partying out in the country. Try to use some farm animal toy sets and classic brown fencing as birthday cake decorations and you will be amazed how great the cake will look like. Add some dyed frosting to create the ground and put all the toys on the surface. Put these lovely pigs and cows and you are ready for a big party!

You can also use a movie theme for your birthday cake. You can use your kids’ meal toys from fast food as birthday cake decorations. If you don’t have any of these, then you can go to your local toy shop and buy some small figures. If you want to make your cake look outer space it is a good idea to melt chocolate and pour it into molds such as stars and planets. These will be unique birthday cake decorations.

Apart from the above mentioned ideas, there are many others which you can use to make a great birthday cake for your children. If you are making another type of cake, not sheet cake, then you can use some of bright theme ideas from Thomas the Tank Engine to Lego theme. There are many wonderful birthday cake decorations which will make your cake a true masterpiece.

Morgan Hamilton offers expert advice and great tips regarding all aspects concerning holidays. Get more information by visiting Birthday Cake Decorations Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Morgan_Hamilton

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Birthday Cake Pans

Birthday cake pans are what you need to make someone's birthday really special. Nothing says you care like baking them a special and personalized cake. With baking becoming popular once again finding the best cake pan at the best price is extremely important. This article will take a look at what you should look for, and how to find the best deal.

Shaped birthday cake pans come in just about every form imaginable. From your kid's favorite cartoon character, trains, flowers, symbols, and even "adult" shapes. With this many choices to choose from it may be difficult to decide which is best. If you're having trouble deciding you should go one of two ways. Your first options is the easiest, find something that they like and buy the cake pan that matches. If they like music, bake a guitar cake pan. Your other option is to start with more basic cake shapes and decorate it in a way that they'll love. The second option is much more challenging because decorating cakes freehand can be tricky. In order to make it as easy as possible, start with a very basic set of cake pans and create tiered cake. Cover the cake in icing or fondant and decorate it with words or simple designs.

When shopping for shaped cake pans it can be frustrating to try and find them in your area. I live in a very food-centric area and tracking down specific cake molds is difficult. Thankfully, the internet has many places that you can find the exact pan you want at an awesome price. There are also instructions and recipes that are downloadable for the most detailed and intricate cakes. If baking cakes is a hobby of yours, or one that you want to pursue, spend some time browsing around the web and find a few sites that match your needs!

Cynthia McCormick is the creator and owner of a website that specializes in finding the best price for cake pans around the web. They have tons of birthday cake pans available for sale.

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Themed Birthday Cake Decorating Ideas

There are an endless number of ways that you can come up with to decorate a cake for a birthday party. This article deals with 4 themes, and what you can do to create a very nice cake for your next birthday party.

For adults you can create a cake decorated based on an "Age" theme. Instead of a single cake why not create individual cupcakes totaling the age of the birthday honoree. If the person is 50 then you create 50 cupcakes in their honor. You can decorate the cupcakes with various objects that are related to the individual such as a small picture of their favorite actor/actress or singer. You can get miniature representations of their favorite cartoon or theme park characters to place on the cupcakes. Another idea is to simply adorn each cupcake with the individuals age.

If you are hosting a Gothic themed birthday party you can do a number of things to make your cake standout and be a hit of the party. You can use food coloring to turn a regular cake into a black cake or turn white icing black. Shape your cake into a coffin or some other symbol of the Gothic culture and lifestyle. Go out and find black icing, black frosting, or black sprinkles to use on the cake. You can also bake a red velvet cake for a little variety too. Go to the stores in your local area that specialize in crafts, Halloween, and Gothic products and by items to help decorate your cake for the event.

If you are throwing a child's birthday party you can cut and decorate the cake in the form of the child's favorite board game such as Candy Land, Monopoly, etc. Another popular thing to do is to cut the cake in the form of a favorite toy such as a doll or a race car and decorate accordingly. Most kids play some type of sport. Cut and decorate the cake into the shape of the field that they play on for instance a soccer field, football field, baseball field, tennis court, or putting green.

If you have a college aged kid that you are throwing a party for then creating a cake that is decorated and shaped in the form of the schools mascot and colors is always going to be a big hit.

Coming up with birthday cake decorating ideas is fun and easy. Just simply let your imagination run wild with ideas, and find fun and creative ways to implement them.

Kitwana Akil writes about cake decorating ideas at http://BestCakeDecoratingIdeas.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kitwana_Akil Find More : cake decorated , birthday cake , Cheesecake Chocolate , Services Catering